Compress a video, free

Compress a video in one pass

Drop your video, pick a compression level, and download, all in your browser.

Nothing uploads

The encode happens in the tab; the file is never sent to us.

When you’d want this

Email and messaging apps reject large attachments outright, and most of them cap well under a gigabyte. Compressing a clip first is often the only way to send it directly instead of routing through a separate file-sharing link.

Say you’ve got a two-minute product demo, demo-v3.mp4, that’s just over your email provider’s attachment limit. One pass at Balanced usually brings it under the cap, so you can attach it directly instead of pasting a download link.

The other common case is storage. A folder of raw phone or screen-recording footage adds up fast, so compressing clips you want to keep but don’t need at full bitrate buys back disk space without deleting anything.

Quality levels

Level	Trade-off	Best for
Lighter	Keeps the most detail, modest size cut	Footage you’ll edit further, quality-sensitive shares
Balanced	Solid size cut with clean playback	Most everyday uploads and sharing
Strongest	Smallest file, more visible compression on complex scenes	Slow connections, strict upload limits

How compression works

Unlike a mute or remux, compression re-encodes every frame; there’s no way to shrink a video without touching the pixel data. The output is always H.264 MP4 with AAC audio at 128 kbps, the combination that plays back everywhere without extra codecs. Each level changes how hard the encoder works to save space: lower quality settings allow more detail loss in exchange for a smaller file.

Common pitfalls

Compressing a file that’s already heavily compressed rarely helps much, and can sometimes look worse: the encoder has little redundant data left to remove, so it starts cutting into the video that matters. If a clip has already been through a lossy export, try Lighter first.

Re-compressing the same file multiple times compounds quality loss each pass. Keep your original and compress from it again if you need a different level later, rather than compressing an already-compressed copy.

Privacy

The compression runs in your browser via WebAssembly, so your video never leaves your device. We store none of it and pay for no processing on our end, which is a big part of why the tool can stay free. There is no upload, no server, and no account.

Need a specific resolution instead?

Resize your video to a preset like 1080p or 720p. Resizing also shrinks the file, without a quality-level trade-off.

Need the words, not a smaller file?

If it’s the spoken content you’re after, transcribe the clip and Hushscript labels who’s speaking.